Adventures with Ideas: Truth, Beauty and the Paradoxes of Life
Juliet Bennett's Blog
  • About
  • My Story
  • Research
  • Photography
  • Modeling
  • 2009
  • 2010
  • 2011
  • 2012
  • 2013
  • 2014
  • 2015
  • About
  • My Story
  • Research
  • Photography
  • Modeling
  • 2009
  • 2010
  • 2011
  • 2012
  • 2013
  • 2014
  • 2015
  • Home
  • Random Life Stuff
  • Listen to Your Younger Self

Listen to Your Younger Self

18 Jun ’14 Leave a Comment Written by Juliet Bennett

I recently watched a show where “Elders” were asked what advice they would give to their 20-year old self. I imagined myself in my mid-to-late seventies being ask that question: what advice might my older self give to my present self? “Listen to your younger self”.

By this I do not mean to advise one to listen to that insecure or arrogant version of you, in your teenage years or early twenties, but to listen to the optimism and openness of your earliest years of life, and which sometimes can be found later on too.

As children it is easy, we do not yet know the world’s ills. As we get older, the state of the world can appear less changeable, less malleable, more violent and depressing…

But dig deep enough, somewhere inside many of us, is a voice of hope, of openness, and of unconditional love. That big-hearted you, who found joy in learning the colour of the sky and playing in the grass, is still you. I would advise my present self to seek that feeling, that openness, that optimism and to hang on to it for all of my life.

Surely there is a way to reconnect with that self? To open our selves up and let go of that which brings us down?

I have been browsing through my reflections, dreams, plans and notes to self, written in my mid-twenties. Almost seven years have past, but the words of advice from my younger self to my present self are ones that I will hold on to. Words inspired by books I was reading at the time and by my travels in my very early twenties.

Words such as:

  • The world is your mirror: if you are angry, you will see anger. if you are fearful, you will see fear, but if you are loving, you will see love.
  • You control nothing but your perceptions. Nothing can hurt you unless you give it power to.
  • Disconnect from the worry about what others’ will think or say. Have own rhythm. No need to stress or worry. Do own thing and let everything else flow from there.
  • Never assume anything.
  • Don’t take the little things in life seriously.
  • Have a strong mind and know that you can achieve any goal. Make goals. Don’t let anything or anyone get in the way of achieving them.
  • Relax, laugh, don’t stress or worry. Be organised – it will make it easier to do these things.
  • Be flexible in mind and heart. Follow the wind.
  • Life really is short. You can be in a car crash tomorrow. Therefore treasure and make the most of every moment of every day.

I am not sure what to do with the rest of these writings, dreams and ideas, but I think a few new blog posts are a good place to start…

IMG_3028

My cute li’l sister and I in our smugly ignorant optimistic past.

Note: You might also be interested in some of the advice that came from the panel of Elders: “If you want to be in touch with your humanity, you have to be outraged about injustice because the alternative is indifference” from Stuart Rees; to “don’t be put off by put-downs” from Betty Churcher; “follow your star. Don’t do what your mum and dad say, don’t do what the market says, don’t do what society says but follow your star” from Peter Coleman and from Jane Goodall, a piece of advice that her mother gave her at ten: “If you really want something, you are going to have to work hard and take advantage of opportunity and never give up.”

The challenge is to put these encouraging pieces of advice into practice in the present…

Random Life Stuff
Similar posts
  • My policy wishlist for Australia’s re... — As of 2020, scientists estimate a remaining cumulative emissions budget of 400 gigatonnes of greenhouse gases measured in carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) to keep global average surface temperature within 1.5°C of preindustrial levels (Rogelj et al. 2019).[1] Business-as-usual adds 40 GtCO2 to the atmosphere each year, using up our 1.5°C budget in 10 years. The budget estimated to correspond with [...]
  • 2015 in review — ‘Repetition produces a gradual lowering of vivid appreciation. Convention dominates. A learned orthodoxy suppresses adventure.’ [1] “Without adventure civilization is in full decay. … in their day the great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past. Only the adventurous can understand the greatness of the past.“ At the start of 2015 I was writing an article on [...]
  • Reframing your mind: changing negativ... — “Whatever you want to succeed at, you need to replace any negative scripts you might have with positive ones” (Ash and Gerrand 2002: 7). We need to reframe our minds, changing negative stories to positive stories, one micro story at a time. Eve Ash and Rob Gerrand’s (2002) Rewrite your life! is a book full of tips on how to [...]
  • Taming the beast: technology, corpora... — Have we reached a point in the processes of industrialisation, globalisation, and corporatisation in which we have lost control over our culture, our lives and our shared future? Looking at my life, the lives of those around me, the media and global politics and economics, I think we have. It seems to me that technology controls us, rather than us [...]
  • Slave to society — Society draws us into its world of the trivial, making us slaves to the superficial, the menial, its time-wasting ego-based self-absorbed naval-gazing meaninglessness. It is evermore relentlessness with its inescapable myriad of communication paths that bath you in guilt. “I haven’t replied to this.” “I haven’t called that person back.” “I have to do this.” “I must remember that.” The [...]
Accidentally on Purpose
Clutter to clarity – using mantras Soham and Humsa

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

TRUTH

BEAUTY

ADVENTURE

ART

PEACE

  • Popular
  • Recent
  • Comments
  • Is “God” a Fractal?
    15 Feb ’11
  • Is Lindt chocolate slave chocolate?
    11 Sep ’09
  • Creativism – a philosophy for life
    10 Sep ’09
  • Free Documentaries: The Truth Is Free
    17 Apr ’10
  • Coming to grips with the elephant in the room
    28 Jun ’10
  • Optimum Trajectory, swimming against the current, and man who stare at goats.
    4 Aug ’10
  • A short biography
    2 Sep ’09
  • Sex or chess? Peace, the world’s trump card
    13 Apr ’10
  • Alan Watts Fan Club
    3 Dec ’12
  • Big History Blog Series: Chapter 1 – The Big Bang
    25 Mar ’10
  • My policy wishlist for Australia’s response to climate change
    17 Jan ’20
  • Business leadership in climate change
    1 May ’19
  • A story of (mis)fortune: the farmer and his son
    8 Oct ’18
  • What is life really about?
    1 Mar ’17
  • Why the right (brain) is right…
    22 Feb ’17
  • New life: reflections on being a new mum
    29 Dec ’16
  • Orwellian Australia: the “[Un]Fairer Parental Leave Bill 2015”
    1 May ’16
  • Alan Watts’ ‘dramatic model’ and the pursuit of peace
    18 Mar ’16
  • A new lens to view the world: the world as process
    14 Jan ’16
  • 2015 in review
    1 Jan ’16

Adventures with Ideas... on Facebook

Archives

Categories

  • Academic (35)
  • Adventure (119)
  • Beauty (23)
  • Featured Posts (10)
  • Peace (124)
  • Random Life Stuff (102)
  • Truth (164)
Constitutional Recognition

Rights of Indigenous Peoples: A Personal Statement

As a "non-indigenous" Australian living on what was once the land of the Cadigal and Wangal Wangal communities, I wish to acknowledge the inter-generational responsibility that I feel toward the colonial past. As a beneficiary of "White Australia", to the Eora people of Sydney, I request your forgiveness. I stand in solidarity with your rightful demands to self determination and active participation in governmental decisions, and I hope I may learn from your eco-spiritual connection. May we, as Tom Trevorrow of the Ngarrindjeri puts it, learn to 'respect, care and share' the gifts that our planet offers us.

Tags

Alan Watts Atheism Big History Bridge Series Central America Chocolate climate change Conflict Transformation Creativism Ecology Europe God Health India India/Nepal inspiration Life in Oz Life philosophy Meaning of life Modeling My Brazilian My Christian Journey Narrative Narratology Occupy optimal trajectory Panentheism peace philosophy Photography Politics population Potentialism poverty religion slavery social construction South America The Pyramid Travel United States War What is God Wikileaks Yoga

Donation

evolve theme by Theme4Press  •  Powered by WordPress